Mar Diestro-Dópido

The cities of Italian neorealist films were often brutal, bombed-out and broken. Few film movements portrayed such stark and uncompromising visions of urban life; hardly surprising with the dust still settling from the destruction caused by World War II.

In 1990, Peter Greenaway and his collaborator, the visual artist Tom Phillips, adapted the first eight cantos of Dante’s Inferno for television. The result was a four-part miniseries for Channel 4, using layers of inset video illustrations as Dante (Bob Peck) narrates his descent to Hell.

I was born in 1964, at the start of the golden era of television. I’d watch Mexican melodramas, mostly those directed by Ismael Rodríguez starring Pedro Infante. At the same time I was discovering the Universal monster movies [such as Creature from the Black Lagoon, 1954]. They mixed strongly in my mind. So I often feel like I am making Ismael Rodríguez movies with monsters. On Sundays back then we’d go to a matinee.